> There are two questions which are of immediate 'real world' importance
>
> One has to do with X400 and SMTP / MIME and how reliably these (and
> associated WANs) currently handle binary messages
I have had considerable experience of passing binaries via both
X400, and also SMTP/MIME over the Internet. Some of the files in
both cases were 4M bytes or so. I found X400 to be 100% accurate,
and SMTP/MIME to be around 98% accurate. Whilst 98% is not
acceptable in some applications I found that using PKZIP to compress
whatever I sent has the dual advantages of making it smaller in most
cases, and also adding a simple CRC error check which detects
corruption and ensures that you do not use corrupted data
unwittingly. For the facility it provides I find this totally
acceptable.
> The other has to do with whether we approve of the NHSnet being pedalled
> as a grand solution for all of our comms needs, or whether we perceive
> our needs for clinical EDI messages to be quite separate from our needs
> for email and WWW. The NHS Telecom boards take the former view and
> cannot understand why GPs are not flocking in to take up what is being
> offered.
It may well provide a total solution for some, but we need to be
able to choose our service providers from a broad armoury of options
including NHSnet. Most of my WWW work is done at home - NHSnet is
unlikely to provide that facility
Given the performance (lack of it) of the Racal network at the
moment, NHSnet has a credibility legacy to overcome.
--
John Clegg,
Nailsea, Bristol, England [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask]
Homepage at http://web.ukonline.co.uk/Members/john.clegg/contents.htm
"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans" - JW Lennon
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